


Made Somehow

by samalander



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: BAMF Maria Hill, BAMF Nick Fury, Backstory, Canon Character of Color, Gen, Isaiah Bradley cameo, Male Character of Color, Origins, POV Character of Color, Pre-Avengers Movie, SHIELD, SHIELD Agents Being Badass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 19:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>20 years before Tony Stark was Iron Man, before Steve Rogers was found in the ice or Bruce Banner had his accident, a few men got together and built a little peacekeeping force they called SHIELD. What SHIELD stood for, exactly, was up in the air, as was everything that came next.</p><p>(A Nick Fury Origin Story)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made Somehow

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for playing fast and loose with both MCU and real world timelines, and the possible butchering of any comics canon I tried to throw in. There isn't enough Nick Fury fic out there, so this is my attempt to fill the void.
> 
> _If I hadn't made me, I would've been made somehow_  
>  _If I hadn't assembled myself, I'd have fallen apart by now_  
> 
>  _If I hadn't made me, I'd be more inclined to bow_  
>  _Powers that be would have swallowed me up_  
>  _But that's more than I can allow_ \- Incubus, Make Yourself
> 
> (Immeasurable thanks to Picksy, without whom none of this would have happened.)

On October 4, 1957, the eyes of the world were fixed to the sky, searching out the blinking dots that represented mankind's first ascendance to the heavens; the Soviet satellite Sputnik, spinning and skimming the atmosphere as it flew miles above their heads.

In a little room in Hell's Kitchen, sweat plastering her bangs to her head, Myrna Fury screamed in pain as the midwife tried to talk her through the contractions, tried to calm her. In the hallway, Jack was pacing, waiting for the telltale cry of a baby, the sudden silence of his wife. He was single minded in his concentration, so much so that when it came, the stilling and the piercing cry, it took him a whole thirty seconds to recognize it, and step into the room.

Myrna was laid on sweaty sheets, blood pooling between her legs, as the midwife washed a small baby in their basin.

Jack took two steps into the room, paused, and regarded the women thoughtfully. The midwife spared him a glance - he knew that the husband shouldn't be in here, knew that Myrna wasn't done with her ordeal, but there was a baby, swaddled in a blanket, and he reached his arms out for it.

"It's a boy," the midwife said, stepping back to the bedside and muttering calm words to Jack's exhausted wife.

Jack smiled down at the little face. He counted ten fingers, ten toes, and a nose like a button. Utterly perfect.

"His name is Nicholas," Jack said, and though neither of the women were listening to him, the baby made a hungry cry which, Jack thought, might be mistaken for agreement.

* * *

When Nick was nine, his Uncle Iz took him to an anti-war rally to see a man speak.

Uncle Iz was tall, muscular man, who let Nick sit on his shoulders as the speaker went on, and held Nick's hand as they walked home to Hell's Kitchen, their coat collars popped against the April winds that brushed up and down the city streets.

Nick had a long of questions about the place they went - why the man speaking was so angry, and why the war was bad. He knew Uncle Iz had been in the army in the last war; that's where he had met Nick's father.

But he also knew a little better than to talk about it in the street, not least of all because Uncle Iz was so tall that Nick could barely imagine how his voice would climb all the way up to his ears.

The walk was long and Nick was tired; it was more excitement than he usually felt, more than he could really process. Finally, his little legs fatigued, Nick tugged on Uncle Iz's coat sleeve.

"Will you carry me?" he asked, and Iz bent down so Nick could clamber onto his back, an old practiced move of theirs. Gently, he wrapped his arms around Iz's neck, and let his chin fall onto his solid shoulder.

They made their way home, faster now that Nick wasn't walking, and Iz could take the long strides he was used to.

Nick's father greeted them at the door, clasping uncle Iz's arm and calling him Bradley, like he always did. Which Nick thought was funny, because that was his last name, and no one else Nick had ever met was called by their last name.

Iz took Nick into the living room, and they sat on the couch together.

"Okay, kid," Iz said. "Now is a good time for questions."

Nick thought for a long moment before selecting the one that was at the front of his head, the one that had buzzed his brain the whole way home. "How come some people don't like Mr. King? He seemed like a good guy."

"Nicky," Uncle Iz sighed and bent low, so they were nearly nose-to-nose. "Nicky, you know that some people hate people because they're black or they're white. Some people hate people because they say things other people don't like. And some people are just hateful."

"But why?"

The corner of Iz's mouth turned up. He liked it when Nick asked questions. "Why do you think?"

Nick didn't know. He really wasn't sure what it was that made people want to hate, want to be mean to other people. Unless-- "Are they angry?"

"Some of them are," Iz said, nodding. "Some people are really angry, and some are scared."

"Because Mr. King says things they don't like?"

"It's Doctor King," Iz corrected him, and Nick nodded. Good to know. "And yes. He says things that people don't like. But sometimes people get scared that things are changing, and some people are mad because bad things happen to them, and they don't know who to be mad at."

Nick knew about that. He had heard his mother talk about it once, when his father was out and she thought Nick was asleep. She said that Jack was angry at the world for doing him wrong, and he took it out on the boy.

Nick wasn't sure who the boy was, unless it was him, but his father only ever yelled when he did something wrong. But that wasn't about Dr. King.

"Are you mad, Uncle Iz?"

Iz closed his eyes for a long moment. "I used to be, kid. I used to be real mad. But sometimes, if you try hard enough, you can learn to stop being mad, and start being alive."

Nick's mother stuck her head around the corner from the kitchen then, before Nick could ask what that meant, and told them that supper was in five minutes and they'd better wash up, which Nick stood to obey.

"Uncle Iz?"

"Yeah, kid?"

"I'm glad you're not mad anymore."

Uncle Iz reached down to ruffle Nick's hair, and Nick grinned and went to wash up for dinner.

* * *

Howard Stark was well into his sixties by the time Nick Fury met him, but his energy was still that of a young man - he still bounced on the balls of his feet when he was excited, and still came up with a list of impossible things to do, six or seven a month, and then did them.

Nick was barely skirting 25, and sometimes he felt exhausted by the older man. The first time they met was unfortunate - Nick was laid up in Walter Reed, a piece of shrapnel from the Beirut Embassy lodged in his eye.

He woke to a presence in the chair next to his bed, a short, white man that he'd never seen before. A stranger who was brazenly reading an issue of Mad Magazine like it was something every older white dude did.

"Hi, Nick," the man said, extending a hand. Nick stared with his one good eye. "I'm Howard Stark."

Nick knew who Howard Stark was. If not because of his work on Captain America and being tapped to develop the Star Wars Defense System, than because of the stories Uncle Iz had told him. Stories that didn't make Nick exactly keen to shake this man's hand.

Still, his mother raised him right, so he reached out.

"I know you're sleepy," Howard went on, "but we have a mutual friend - Isaiah Bradley? - and he told me to talk to you about a little project I have in mind."

Nick blinked sluggishly, still trying to get used to monovision. "Uncle Iz sent you?"

"He did."

"To talk about Star Wars?"

Howard's face split into a wide grin. "Oh no," he said. "Not at all. Nick, I want to talk to you about a little group I call SHIELD."

"SHIELD?"

Howard nodded. "It'll stand for something later - something like ‘Sugary Hedonists, Inside Evil Lemony Erotic Dictators,' I don't know. It doesn't matter. What matters is that the acronym sound impressive. But it's going to be - or I want it to be - the kind of group that's ready for what's coming."

Nick couldn't quite follow all the words that spilled out of this man. "What's coming?" he asked, half as a question, but more as a repetition.

Howard looked grave. "Nick, we live in a world of unfathomable mystery. Your Uncle Iz was a test subject, right, the same way Captain America was. There are mutants in upstate New York. They have a school. ARPANET is now on TCP/IP. This world is going to start spinning faster, and the United Nations isn't the group to handle it. SHIELD will be."

Nick was really not following. "Sir, I got a piece of a building in my eye," he mumbled, and Howard leaned in to hear him over the machines that were always beeping. "Maybe we can talk when I'm not sedated."

"Smart," Howard said, smiling. "Isaiah said you were smart. Tell me you'll think about it, and I'll get a nurse in here to give you a sponge bath. What do you like, redheads? Blondes? There's a sister out there with an afro, if that's your groove."

"I'll think about it," Nick told him, mostly wishing for silence, "just please go away."

Howard nodded. "I'll see you when you're well," he said, setting a business card down on the nightstand. "Give me a call, Nick, or you run the risk of me just showing up."

Nick winced, because he was pretty sure that's what Howard wanted. The old man laughed and bounced from the room, and Nick sighed as the frantic energy he radiated drained out the door behind him.

A pretty nurse - a blonde, Nick noted dimly - came in to check on him a minute later, and her smile was sweet, and her touch was soft.

"I'm gonna make a shield," he told her, his words slurring, and she smiled.

"Of course you are," she said, and Nick found himself drifting back to sleep in a sea of her smile.

* * *

The eye couldn't really be saved - they didn't have to take it out, but Nick lost 95% of his vision in it, and decided that, rather than rocking a glass replacement, he'd find himself an eyepatch and make it work.

Somehow.

It was weird, at first, getting used to the changes, but he was an adaptable man, and Nick found that he grew accustomed to his reduced field of vision more quickly than he or his doctors had anticipated.

Three months had passed since Stark's visit when Nick was released from the hospital and sent to his parents' house to heal.

Nick holed up in his childhood room, safe and ensconced. His father tried to talk him out of the house - tried to convince Nick to go to a baseball game, a bar, his brother Kenny's orchestra concert. Nick just brooded, staring at every spot in the room except the phone. No matter how hard he tried, his attention always returned there, and he imagined picking it up to call Howard Stark, to move on.

Eventually, he propped the card Stark had given him up against the phone, in hopes it would motivate him to call. But it didn't. The card just sat there, mocking him. It was a reminder that he wasn't going to be an active-duty marine anymore, not with one eye. It was a reminder that his life, as he knew it, was just about done.

The phone rang on the fourth Sunday that Nick was home, while his parents and brothers were out at church. Nick stared at it until it stopped, and downstairs the answering machine told its story to the caller.

Thirty minutes later, there was a knock at Nick's bedroom door, which swung open to reveal Uncle Iz.

Iz wasn't young anymore; in the last few years his aging had seemed to speed up, turning the former walls of hard muscle into uneven pouches of fat under skin that sagged and puckered. His hair was gray, where it still was, and his keen dark-brown eyes were cloudy with cataracts, and obscured behind glasses. His steps were slow, and he leaned heavily on a cane. Iz was 63, and that was too young to look so old.

The sight of him in the doorway shocked Nick to his feet, and he scrambled to pull out his desk chair and help Iz into it.

"Thanks, kid," Iz said, and Nick was struck by the fact that his voice seemed old, too.

"What happened?" Nick asked, and immediately he regretted it, but Iz smiled weakly.

"I'm dying," he said, like he was announcing the weather.

"Why?"

Iz smiled again. "We all die sooner or later."

"You're not so old," Nick told him, running his hand through the short hairs on the back of his neck.

"When I was in the army," Iz told him, "they were trying to make another Captain America. They--" he sighed heavily. "The generals said it would get us into active war zones if we participated, but we never went. Most everyone else got sick and discharged. Your father thought I was an idiot to volunteer. But I was lucky, and the serum, the one they gave me, they thought it was good."

Nick nodded. "It wasn't?"

"It's been eating my brain for forty years, kid. Little bits at a time. They say I'm going to have dementia by the time I'm 65, and won't live out of my seventies."

Nick just stared. "You're really dying."

"I really am," Iz agreed. "And you're really not."

"Is there-- do you need anything?"

Iz smiled sadly. "I need you to call Howard Stark, Nicky."

"I will," Nick promised, and Iz nodded his approval.

"Good. Now, tell me about this eye of yours."

Nick sat on his bed and began the story, but it was rote by now- he had told the doctors, his COs, even written a damn report so they'd give him medical coverage. He let his mind wander as he talked, over all the things he'd done with Iz when he was little, all the walks they'd taken and talks they'd had, how Iz taught him how to navigate the subway, how to ask a girl out. He was more than an uncle, really, more than a godfather. He was Nick's oldest friend.

Which, Nick supposed, meant he pretty much had to call Howard Stark.

* * *

Howard met Nick in a run-down diner in Long Island City, where the coffee was cold and the pie was at least three days old.

"I hate this place," Howard told him, taking a deep draught of the cold coffee. "I have all my business meetings here."

"Why's that?" Nick asked, and Howard just grinned.

"Do you like the SHIELD idea?" he asked, working a gelled cherry loose from the filling of his pie and stabbing it with a fork. It was almost violently red, the color of arterial blood, and Nick had to close his eyes for a moment before the memory of a collapsing building, blood and smoke and screams, came rushing back.

"I do," Nick said. "I think it's important. But who watches the watchers?"

Howard nodded. "Right. That's the thing. We let this thing get too big, let it get wrong, it becomes more of a threat than a help. It's what happened to SSR. It could happen to SHIELD."

"And you have something in mind," Nick said, nodding to the waitress as she placed the world's most depressing burger in front of him.

"It's a council. Elected from the UN, or appointed by any government with a sufficiently large population - because we want to serve population, not pocketbooks - and we call it something like the World Safety Commission, so that people think it's about water taint and seatbelts and shit."

"And who watches them?"

"SHIELD does. They both have input on each other, like Congress and the President, and neither can choose the people who run the other."

Nick took a bite of the hamburger - which he really should put sarcastic quote marks around, with the gray meat and limp slice of warm lettuce - and chewed thoughtfully. "I can see why you hate this place," he said, swallowing with great effort.

Howard laughed.

"The idea isn't all there yet," Howard said, "I need some military minds in on it, and some anti-terrorism people, and maybe even a mutant or two, just so we can be sure, but I want you in on it."

"Why me?"

"Because," Howard stirred his coffee. "Despite your short career, you have a shitton of promise. And if the military is going to toss you aside, I think it behooves their largest contractor to pick you up and put you to work."

Nick nodded. "I'm in," he said. "But no more crappy food."

"Deal," Howard smiled, and extended his hand. Nick clasped it tightly. This was either the best idea or the worst. Either way, he was in.

* * *

Building SHIELD was slow, it was difficult, and on the best days, it made Nick vaguely homicidal.

Stark was in charge of selling it to the government, with convincing Reagan that Star Wars was a big enough project that there needed to be non-military control failsafes. And, bless his heart, he did it with aplomb. (Though, as near as Nick could tell, Howard did everything with aplomb, and a fair sprinkle of panache. Anyone whose 12-year-old's birthday party was covered by Page Six needed handfuls of both.) There were caveats, though, and hoops to jump through, because not even Howard Stark could sweet talk the government into building a super-secret paramilitary counter terrorist organization without a condition or two. Nick was in charge of making Howard look good by comparison, and recruiting fellow service people who understood the importance of what they wanted to do.

He heard no more than yes, and they found roadblocks and walls that no one ever anticipated - not least of which was the funding issues that arose in ‘87, and a newly democratic Congress with a military stick up its butt after the whole Iran thing, or the graduation of young Tony from MIT, and his subsequent spending of Howard's assets.

But still, six years after he first met Howard Stark, three years after he buried Uncle Iz and two years after laying his mom in the same ground, Nick was standing in the lobby of a building in New York, watching workmen paint an austere eagle, the logo the government had paid a few thousand dollars for, onto the wall.

"We did good work," Howard said, clapping Nick on the shoulder. He'd approached from the right, which explained why Nick hadn't seen him coming. All these years, and he was still getting used to the sensation of being half blind. He was apt to forget these days, which was a nice break from the constant vigilance he'd managed for the first few years.

"We did," Nick agreed. "And we'll keep it up."

Howard smiled, and steered Nick towards the elevator. "Absolutely, _Agent_ Fury. But for now-" Howard pressed a button, and the shiny silver doors slid open. "I want you to meet your new partner."

* * *

Howard had a sense of humor. Nick had to give him that. A damn funny one, at times. There were stories from World War II, long, funny false yarns about dropping Captain America into war zones that Nick would never believe, but he still loved to hear them.

But Maria Hill was not funny.

Not even a little.

They had started out okay - Nick was used to working with people who were more rigid than he was. Hell, you didn't get to guard an embassy without meeting a few truly punctilious assholes. But Hill took the fucking cake.

To begin with, she was seemingly incapable of having fun. She didn't drink or dance or even go to movies. (Or at least, not movies Nick went to, and he wasn't sure how he felt about people who didn't even _want_ to see "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?") Her idea of fun seemed to involve documentaries about the atrocities human beings inflicted on each other, because she didn't get enough of _that_ in her daily life, and knitting, which just seemed weird for a former CIA operative. No matter what she said about dexterity.

"I can't connect with her," Nick told his dad over beers and baseball in the little apartment Nick kept in Chelsea. "I just... there's nothing we have in common. She's uptight, and she's mean."

Jack raised an incredulous eyebrow. "And you're a kind, fluffy bunny?"

"I don't know about fluffy."

"Takes all kinds," his dad said. "Is she good in the field?"

Nick shrugged. "She's just... she's a stickler, you know?"

"I know the type. Your mother was like that."

"Mom?" Nick asked. "Are you saying I should marry Hill?"

His dad laughed. "No, not unless you want to. But sometimes, you find a person who thinks totally differently from you, and you realize that they've got some valid stuff going on."

Nick contemplated the baseball game for a long moment.

"You were born at home," Jack told him. "Because I'm not a big-- well, after Iz, I didn't want you all in government hands." He sighed. "Your mom was so pissed. When we had Kenny, she told me it was a hospital or I could give birth. She was right-- it was easier with Kenny. It was, you know, one of those times when following the rules was a better idea than doing whatever the hell I wanted."

"You really made mom have me at home?"

"Made nothing," Jack chuckled, low and a little sad. "She agreed. She just knew better the second time."

"I miss her," Nick said.

"Me too," his dad agreed, taking a draught of his beer.

* * *

London was a city exactly like New York, except different in every conceivable way.

Nick had been once before, on leave with some buddies, but it hadn't been long enough to really see anything besides the Tower of London and a few of the less-reputable establishments often visited by servicemen.

Tonight he was wrapped in a black jacket with the collar pulled tight up to his ears, shivering atop the National Gallery, staring down at the bright lights of Trafalgar Square.

The mark was making a drop here - thousands of pounds worth of cocaine would be dropped in a phone box, and it was Nick's job to spot him so Maria could trail him. He was linked to a ring of human trafficking, and thought to be connected to Noriega, which would help in the rationale Stark was working up to get that fucking dirtbag deposed.

Nick watched Hill play the tourist, smiling as she snapped pictures of Lord Nelson and the innumerable pigeons who crapped on him all day. She actually looked like she was having fun, which just seemed unlikely.

Nick caught the movement out of the corner of his eye - a man, moving in a kind of choreographed way that bespoke a long practiced maneuver, entered the square from the south. He couldn't explain how he knew it was the mark, but he tapped his ear to activate his communicator anyway.

"Hill, on your eight. Gray sweatshirt, English flag baseball cap. It's him. But--"

Hill cut across him. "Got it."

"Wait," Fury said, tracking the man's movement with growing concern. "Something is wrong. Hill, something is wrong."

He saw Maria hesitate. "Is it him?"

"Yes, but--"

"Then I'm following the mark," she snapped into the earpiece, touristy smile never leaving her lips. "I'm following orders."

Nick wanted to scream. "Hill--"

"I'm not losing him," she said, and Nick felt downright impotent. He couldn't get down fast enough, not without losing both of them, and so he watched helplessly as Hill tailed the man he'd identified, and the feeling of dread settled heavily in his stomach.

It was listed as an error without fault in the report - Maria had followed orders, and Nick hadn't identified a second operative in the square. But the fact remained that the night after Maria followed a man in a gray sweatshirt through half of Westminster and most of the City of London, she watched helplessly as he nonchalantly stepped to the edge of Blackfriars bridge, pulled out a pistol, and shot himself in the head, his body tumbling into the muddy water below before she could so much as move.

* * *

"Stark," Nick growled, stepping into the older man's office - of course he was director, he was always going to be director. "I can't work with her."

They were four hours back from London, only a day since the op went south, and Nick was still seething. About the mission, about the mark, and the 15 civilians killed in a skirmish between Panamanian rebels and the cartel they were trying to root out. Civilians who Nick and Maria could have saved.

" _You_ can't work with _me_?"

It was a testament to Nick's high dudgeon that he hadn't even noticed Hill sitting in the chair in front of Howard's desk, her back washboard-straight and her arms crossed, the same posture she held when she disagreed with Nick.

Which was fucking always.

"No, Hill," Nick snapped. "I can't work with some stick-in-the-mud, by-the-book, never met a rule she didn't want to obey former CIA _freak_ like you."

Howard raised an eyebrow, and Maria's face tightened in anger. "And you think I want to work with some free-spirited, my-way-or-the-highway, couldn't make it four years in the Marines _jerk_?"

Nick had never hit a woman. Hell, he had never really hit a person who he wasn't facing in a battle, but Hill was all over his last nerve, and the nerves of all of Nick's ancestors and descendants. She was downright irritating, and he saw his anger and indignation reflected right back at him as she reflexively clenched and unclenched her fists.

At least he wasn't the only one skirting violence here.

"Children," Howard said, a sternness in his voice that made Nick nearly pity the discipline Tony Stark must have seen in his childhood.

"You two are partners for a reason," Howard continued. "As I was just telling Hill, there's always a benefit to working with someone you can learn from. So why don't you two hold hands and skip out of my office, because I'm not reassigning either of you."

"I'll resign," Hill said, her arms still crossed.

Howard shrugged. "You're free to do so, Agent Hill."

She wouldn't, of course. Neither of them would. For all the things about each other that made them vaguely (or, in Nick's case, very specifically) homicidal, they were both stubborn assholes. He imagined they were likely to divide their office with a roll of masking tape before either of them resigned over this.

She turned on her heel and marched from the office, muttering something about Marines and military intelligence. Nick, being a gentleman, waited until she was out of eyesight to flick off her retreating back.

"Nick," Howard sighed, because of course he had seen it. Of course. "You have to work with her."

"Why?"

Howard leveled one of his stern glares at Nick. "Because you could both be really great. You two could run this outfit one day. But not the way you are now. You're too cavalier, she's too uptight. So try following a rule every so often, and maybe I'll be a nice man and give you a new partner."

"You're not a nice man," Nick said.

Howard shrugged. "No, but I could have a sudden change of heart."

Nick sighed and turned to leave the office. It was useless to argue with Howard Stark. He always won, even when he was wrong. He was just that guy.

* * *

They were pinned down, under fire, somewhere in Panama, and Nick was losing blood from a bullet that had decided to make a neat little home in his side.

It was not Nick's best day.

Hill swore quietly as a branch snapped near them, startling what few birds had settled since the gunfire had waned, and finished tying the tourniquet she had fashioned from a sleeve of her shirt around his middle.

"You with me?" she asked, and Nick blinked groggily.

"I'm here," he choked, trying not to make any more noise than necessary. "You should go ahead."

Hill rolled her eyes. "Yeah, no way. Tell me about all the regulations I'm breaking."

Nick wheezed a laugh. "What makes you think I know any regulations?"

Maria froze as another branch snapped, this one closer, and she drew her sidearm. "Stay still," she hissed. That wasn't going to be a problem for Nick, since moving in any direction hurt like he was being torn apart. Which, given the bullet making nice with his ribs, he was.

Hill slipped away from his side, moving in the careful way she had where she made whatever the opposite of noise was. Nick concentrated on staying awake, staying conscious and upright. He wasn't sure how much time ticked by, how many ineffable hours, before he heard shouts and gunshots.

 _This is it_ , he thought. _I die in a jungle, deserted by my partner._

But the shots didn't whizz by his head, the footsteps didn't get closer. Through his haze of pain, Nick was something like 70% sure they were headed away from him.

Which meant Hill had set up a distraction of some kind, was leading them away.

And that was all well and good, but Nick was _dying_ , and there were flies in the humid air, and he was really not all that coherent in his mind.

There were more shouts, more gunshots, more running feet. And then they stopped, they all stopped, with seven - no, eight - loud pops.

The cicadas - or whatever bugs lived in the canopy here - took up their song again after a few moments. Time ticked by, interminable and incomprehensible. Nick decided he was dead, and this was hell. Or, with his luck, heaven. Or both. Limbo.

Hill's face bobbed back into view. She had a smear of blood across her nose, and sweat poured down her forehead.

"You dead, too?" he asked. Hill barked a laugh, which was deafening in the quiet jungle.

"Not so lucky, Fury," she said. "Can you stand?"

Nick shook his head. "Not really."

Hill nodded. "Okay." She glanced around. "You know any field medicine?"

Nick swallowed. His throat was so dry. "A little."

"If I got branches or something, think you could talk me into making something to get you up that rise over there?"

She pointed vaguely west, and Nick had a little trouble following her arm.

"I don't know," he said. "We can try."

Hill smiled again, and if she was going to make that a habit, Nick was going to revisit his theories about what plane of existance he was currently inhabiting. Because Maria's smile seemed more suited for hell than a Panamanian rain forest.

"Attaboy," she said. "I'm gonna go up there and set a beacon for extraction. You stay here and play nice with the leaves, yeah?"

Nick reached for his gun, and fired over her left shoulder. It was painful, the wound in his side all but tearing open from the swiftness of his movement and his ears ringing from the sound, but a body hit the ground 50 meters from them.

Hill whirled to see it fall.

"Warn a girl next time, okay?"

Nick smiled. "Of course, that's the regulation."

"Don't die, smartass," she told him. "I'll be back in a minute."

"I'll be here," he said.

"You'd better be."

He closed his eyes as she set off for the rise, listening to the sounds of the jungle return. Maybe she wasn't so bad, after all.

* * *

It was raining outside, which was fine with Nick, because he was inside on his couch and the Saints were about to destroy the Raiders on Monday Night Football.

Really, he didn't care much about the Saints or the Raiders, but football was football. Hill was on the couch next to him - something he'd had to get used to in the past few years. Of all the things he and Hill could have had in common, it was football that finally broke the dam. She was a Bears fan, which was sacrilege in any religion that Nick had ever heard of, but he supposed that she was a good enough agent to even forgive that.

This was their thing, the glue of their continued coexistence. Because when they weren't under fire, they had to hold it together somehow, and football was as good a way as any. Every Monday night during the season, they went to Nick's apartment, ate junk food, and yelled at the little men on the screen.

They were halfway through the second quarter, and the score was stagnant and play was slow, when Nick's phone rang. He snatched up the receiver on the second ring, and made a face at Hill, who half-heartedly flicked a Cheeto at him.

"Mr. Fury? This is Obadiah Stane," the man on the phone said. "I'm afraid I have some bad news."

Nick had met Stane before, a few times. He was Stark's right-hand man, the person who was responsible for a lot of the day-to-day of Stark Industries, when Howard was too busy with the running of SHIELD.

He'd never called before. Nick cleared his throat. "Hi," he said, and the waver in his voice was almost palpable. "What's--?"

"Howard and Maria," Stane said. "They were in a car accident. Howard--" Stane choked a little. "They died."

Nick nodded mutely, before remembering he was on the phone. He thanked Stane brusquely, and returned to the couch, where Hill punched him in the arm.

"One of your girlfriends?" she asked, smiling. "Was it Chang?"

"No," Nick said, and he could feel the anger in his chest - the same dark, sad anger that he'd felt when his mother died, and Uncle Iz. The same heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach, the same twisting of his insides. Howard was dead. Howard died.

"Howard--" he said. His voice cracked, but he barely cared. "Howard is dead."

Maria dropped the bowl of Cheetos. Nick watched as the dusty orange carnage obscured his living room floor.

"Fuck," Maria breathed, and she moved to pick up the spilled snacks. Nick just sat, immobile, as the players on screen went into their locker rooms and the announcers made their inane observations and around him, life continued for everyone else.

* * *

He didn't go to Howard's memorial. Stane invited him, asked him to speak, but Nick couldn't stomach it. He couldn't bear to see Howard's picture, know that he was nothing more than the contents of an urn. He didn't want to meet Tony Stark, the wunderkind, didn't want to have to explain to people how he knew the deceased.

Nick stayed home, took the phone off the hook, and drank copiously. It was more in line with the man Stark was, anyway. More like something he would have wanted, less like the carnival of public woe that everyone else seemed to be partaking in.

He'd actually known Howard, actually worked with and liked the man, and it just seemed wrong that people who'd never met him - who only knew the name Stark because it was on their bullets or their airplanes - would want to mourn him.

* * *

The years after Howard died were long and confusing. A few directors came and went, none of them managing to do with SHIELD what Nick knew Howard wanted, and each subsequent one driving them further from the purpose of the organization, driving Nick closer to resigning.

It was 1998 before SHIELD felt like home again, a long seven years of turmoil after Howard's death, marked by the appointment and passing of 5 directors. Nick had climbed the ladder, moving from field agent to administration, rising until he was stymied by the lack of opportunity. He was #3 in SHIELD before his fortieth birthday, and from there it was a waiting game.

If it had been any other organization, if Nick had been any other person, he would have hit the bricks. He would have ducked out long before, and left them to pick up the pieces.

The summer of 1998 was hot in New York, and out in the world Pakistan was testing nuclear missiles while the Congo geared up for another war - it was bound to be a year that saw casualties of countless civilians, and Nick was beginning to wonder if there was any point in SHIELD, if this stuff was going to happen regardless of their existence.

He knew the people on the World Security Council the way a child knows the superintendent of schools - their names were familiar, and he knew who to curse at when he had to go to work on a snow day. But he'd never met the Council, not in a formal way.

Which is why it was a surprise when they asked to meet with him in mid-July.

The room was dark and their faces obscured, which seemed a little at odds with the talks he and Howard had had back in the 80s, all the open accountability and checks and balances they had envisioned.

"We want you to be Director," one of them said - he was a fat man with broad shoulders. "We need to get SHIELD back on track."

Nick agreed with them on one count- the organization wasn't what it should be. He doubted these faceless automatons had any idea what direction it should take, or what Nick would do, but if they wanted to give him the chance, he was all for it.

(And that was wrong, too. The Council was never supposed to appoint Directors. They were supposed to be a check, not a directing force.)

He didn't say any of that to people assembled. He just nodded once. "If nominated," Nick said, trying to keep the smile out of his voice, "I will serve."

He was appointed, officially, in January of 1999, which served Nick just fine. His first act was appointing Maria as his deputy, which was only good sense- she was still a complete stickler for rules, still a complete pain in the ass, and still Nick's most trusted colleague. There was no one else he wanted in his corner, or guarding his six.

Maria brought in a whole infrastructure, to better manage the Strike Teams, which was mainly overseen by a hotshot ex-pilot called Coulson, who was the most unassuming badass Nick had ever met. There were very few people in SHIELD who looked as dangerous as they were, but Coulson took the unassuming cake - he really should have been a middle school principal. Just, a middle school principal who could kill you with your report card.

The three of them tried to keep it sane at SHIELD, kept them under the public's radar and kept most of the bad things that were going to happen theoretical rather than actual. Sure, they missed a few signs, but the general public was all too happy to blame the CIA and FBI, and forget that the Strategic Homeland Initiative, Enforcement and Logistics Division even existed.

Which, to be fair, the employees of SHIELD also liked to pretend.

* * *

Of course, there were times they couldn't pretend. Times when giant green monsters and men in metal suits took out large portions of major cities, when mutants of unknown origin turned bullets against the people who pulled the triggers, when strange and frightening things happened in strange and frightening places.

And there were times when idiots stood in front of the world and announced their secret identities, batting their stupid eyelashes and smugly asserting, "I am Iron Man."

Nick was in Malibu before most people had heard the words. He'd had his eye on Tony Stark, had Coulson trying to talk to the man since he got back from his little adventure in Afghanistan, but he'd met with little success. Not that he'd expected Stark to talk - if there was one thing Howard and Tony had in common, it was their mutual disdain for authority figures they couldn't manipulate.

Tony was too slippery, too hard to pin down.

So Nick waited for Tony to return from his press conference, standing in the darkness of Stark's Malibu home. He stared out the window at the coast and remembered a diner, nearly forty years before, with terrible coffee and gray burgers, with artificially red cherries that fell from between slabs of stale pie crust. He stood and remembered Howard.

Howard always had a plan for everything. He always knew what to do, always had his brain going a million miles faster than everyone else's. Nick was smart, he was cunning and he had lived a life of secrets and lies. But he wasn't Howard Stark.

He had one idea, and one idea only; he needed to get the men with the metal suits, with the crazy powers, and get them to work for- or at least _with_ -SHIELD. He needed an army, he needed soldiers, and he needed them to be better than every threat.

Tony Stark took out Stane. He was already a genius; he was already the best at being a scary robot man.

 _Avengers_ , Nick thought, and he smiled. It was a good name. Those who avenge. They never make trouble, but they make sure that the people who chose to would pay for it. He could sell that.

The door opened, and the air in the room changed ever so slightly. Tony Stark greeted the computer, which had let Nick in without question, somehow, and the computer responded. Nick took a breath.

"I am Iron Man," Nick said, drawing each syllable out to taste them. 

Even in the dark, his eye still fixed on the city lights, Nick could feel Tony's confusion, the somehow tangible sense of fear. Perhaps hanging out in the dark corners of a man's house - especially a man with probable PTSD and a history like Tony's - wasn't the brightest idea. Still, he had come to say something, so he said it.

"Think you're the only superhero in the world? Mr. Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet."

Stark stood his ground. "Who the hell are you?"

"Nick Fury," Nick said, stepping into the light. "Director of SHIELD."

Stark grunted an assent; he didn't register any recognition, didn't seem to know who Nick was, or why SHIELD was important. And maybe that was better, if his relationship with his father had really been as strained as the tabloids said. (Not that Howard had ever let on-- but that wasn't Howard's way. His home life was his home life, and Nick wasn't invited into it.)

"I'm here to talk to you," Nick took another step. "About the Avengers Initiative."


End file.
